


How an SXSW Panel (That I Didn’t Even Go To) Changed My Life

by DCBrierton



Category: Gilmore Girls
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Epistolary, F/F, Fake/Pretend Relationship, First Kiss, Friends to Lovers, Not Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life Compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-08
Updated: 2019-11-08
Packaged: 2021-01-21 09:19:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21297128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DCBrierton/pseuds/DCBrierton
Summary: Rory and Paris founded a new media company together after graduating from Yale, and it’s going great! But are they really just business partners? And do they want to be?
Relationships: Paris Geller/Rory Gilmore
Comments: 7
Kudos: 74
Collections: Femslash Exchange 2019





	How an SXSW Panel (That I Didn’t Even Go To) Changed My Life

**Author's Note:**

  * For [phnelt](https://archiveofourown.org/users/phnelt/gifts).

**9 Reasons Your Best Friend Is The Most Important Person In Your Life**

Rory Gilmore | February 6, 2009 | ReadNow  
---|---|---  
  
**9\. She’s always there for you.** Whether it’s a rough break up or a bad dream, you can always call on her to help you feel better. Or at least to tell you you’re making a big deal out of nothing.

**8\. She cracks you up.** Your senses of humor are perfectly in tune. Well, maybe not perfectly, but you have years’ worth of in-jokes and you don’t care if your pop-culture references go over her head and her puns make you groan.

**7\. She gives it to you straight. **Even if you don’t always like it, she’s always honest about when you need to shave your legs and whether that guy is checking you out or just wondering how you got ketchup on your forehead.

**6.** **She makes the perfect comfort snacks.** She even has different varieties for different occasions. Sure, they may just be different flavors of ice cream from the 7-11, but you never need to tell her when you need some!

**5\. She knows—and likes—your family.** Even the weird relatives. Which is all your relatives, let’s be honest.

**4\. She knows everything about you. **Whether it’s how you take your coffee or the state of your latest UTI, you can tell her anything, and you do. And even if you don’t tell her, she’ll still figure it out. She might be a witch.

**3\. She’s in it for the long haul—and so are you.** No matter how many fights you have or how far apart you are, you know you’ll be back together soon. After all, she knows all your secrets.

**2\. She’ll drop everything for you.** She may never let you live down the time you sleep-texted her a keysmash in the middle of the night and she hunted you down in her pajamas the night before she had to give a big presentation just to check on you. But it won’t stop her coming the next time you need help, either.

**1\. There’s no one you’d rather be around. **Whether you’re happy or sad, she’s always your first call, because she’s the best. 

* * *

_From the SXSW 2009 online schedule_

**Marketing Meets New Media: Building Your Audience Online**  
Venue: Austin Convention Ctr (Room 16AB)  
Date: Sunday, March 15  
Time: 3:30pm to 4:30pm

About: How are filmmakers, musicians, artists, and writers building their brand online in today's crowded New Media environment? What are the techniques for building and maintaining a loyal audience of fans online? What resources are at your disposal and how are social networking sites like Facebook organizing a new generation? Join moderator Scott Kirsner (Editor, CinemaTech / Author, "The New Digital Audience") and learn how to capitalize on big opportunities at the click of a mouse.

Speaker Info: Markos Moulitsas (Kos Media), Scott Kirsner (Editor, CinemaTech), Brett Gaylor (Filmmaker, RiP: A Remix Manifesto), Jonathan Coulton (Jonathan Coulton), Natasha Wescoat (Artist/Blogger, Natasha Wescoat Inc), Paris Geller (Editor and CEO, ReadNow)

* * *

_From the email drafts folder of paris@readnow.com, last edited March 15, 2009, 3:42 am CDT_

From: Paris Geller  
To:  
Subject: another anxiety email

Rory,

I know if I send this to you you’re going to ask why I’m not asleep. I can’t sleep, though, you know I always have trouble sleeping the night before a big occasion. And this is maybe the biggest. Tomorrow I’m going to be on a panel with Marko Moulitsas. Markos Moulitsas! I mean, I know all about your Anderson Cooper thing, but Moulitsas has been incredibly innovative and influential with his site and he would be basically my ideal mentor for growing ours. I mean, he really has a vision! Look at this: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2009/1/12/683163/-I-m-back Or this! https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2009/3/9/706420/-The-Kos-Fellowship-Program. I would love to pick his brains on how to use our viral content to direct readers to our more substantive essays and reporting. And I really think we’d get along on a personal level; he’s so direct and unafraid to call a moron a moron. 

So I’m here in my hotel room, trying to get a good night of sleep so I don’t lose it during the panel tomorrow, and all I can think about is what am I going to say to him. Is there some perfect thing to say to charm him into taking an interest in our site, even though it has no obvious connection to the electoral future of our country (yet)? If you were here, I don’t think I’d be worrying about this—you always know how to charm everyone. I don’t know how you do it. Something about those big eyes you have, I guess, and your innocent airs. I don’t know why you come off so innocent; you’ve been involved in just as much devious stuff as I have. _I’ve_ never stolen a boat with my boyfriend and then dropped out of school. I should seem at least as innocent as you. You’re a corrupting influence on me, if anything. But people never see it that way. 

And yeah, I know, I’m not supposed to be worrying that I’ll lose it during the panel, either. We did all that prep, and we identified the major factors that could lead me to irrational and impulsive behaviors, and we made a plan. I have the flow chart. In the morning I’m going to hit the hotel gym and eat breakfast and all that healthy living crap. And I know that spiraling out of control about my anxiety about the panel was our #2 reason why I might fail to arrive at the panel in a balanced frame of mind. But I just don’t know how to break out of the spiral. It’s 3 am here; I can’t even hear any parties anymore. And I’ve tried everything—the warm bath, the brainless TV, the kumihiro project I packed for craft time. It’s too late for the gym; it will only wind me up. It’s too late to call you, or anyone else, if there were even anyone else I wanted to call. 

I wish you were here. I wish we’d decided your plane ticket was an acceptable extra expense. We could have shared the hotel room; we have plenty of times before. If you were here, you’d know how to talk me down from this. Or no, you probably wouldn’t talk me down from it so much as refuse to have let me get to this point in the first place. You probably would have been pulling out a copy of The Power of Myth at the first sign of trouble and obtaining a huge bowl of popcorn from God knows where. And somehow that would have pulled me out of it, when I know perfectly well that if I went and found some popcorn myself, all that would happen would be irritating little bits getting stuck in my teeth and giving me one more thing to worry about—will they still be there in the morning? Will people be able to see them? It’s a good thing I haven’t eaten any popcorn, frankly. 

But if you were here I would sit on your bed with you and eat popcorn and watch TV (I’m not getting popcorn in my own bed), and I would feel better. Why do you always make me feel better? It doesn’t make sense. No one has that effect on me. Doyle never had that effect on me. I used to have to put him on contact restrictions when I had a big test coming up, because he just made me more nervous. But I’d rather be around you than alone any time. I’m not like that, Rory. I’m not a people person, you know that about me. So what does it mean that it’s different with you, that even if I’m coming off three days with no sleep and heading into crunch time on a major project, I always want to see you? That I’d take a break and meet you for lunch and feel like it’s not holding me back on my goals? 

I’d take a break and meet you for lunch and not even care if it _were_ holding me back on my goals, sometimes. What’s up with that? I mean, sure, your goals are my goals at the present time, that’s the thing about being in business together. But even before that, even when I was still planning to go to med school, which really shouldn’t have needed your involvement, all this stuff was the same. I couldn’t see a future that didn’t have you in it. I didn’t want to. I had a plan With Doyle and a plan Without Doyle, of course. But I had no plan Without Rory. I didn’t want to. I don’t want to. I want to spend my whole life with you.

_I want to spend my whole life with you_. God, that’s sappy. What am I, in love with you? _Am_ I in love with you? What would that even mean? Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck, this is so not working to help me sleep. Okay. Okay. Emergency measures are called for. Okay.

* * *

**Marketing Meets New Media Panel: Partial Transcript**

**Markos Moulitsas:** …The first three, four years of writing, I mean, I averaged about a million words written a year. And I type fast, but it still—there wasn’t time for much else. And I have a wonderful wife who was really understanding about all of this. But, you make sacrifices.

**Paris Geller:** It’s definitely important to surround yourself with people who get it. We’re still in those early stages, where my partner Rory Gilmore and I are doing a lot of the writing on our site, she’s on Twitter all the time, I’m constantly looking at the business end. But we make it work. I don’t think we’d be in the same place, audience-wise, if I didn’t want to spend 24 hours a day with her. 

**Scott Kirsner (moderator):** That must have a big impact on your personal life—how do you cope with that?

**Geller:** Do you mean do I have a boyfriend? That’s a really heteronormative assumption, that a young woman must always need to be paired up with a man to be whole. I mean, really? I don’t think a boyfriend would have anything to offer me at this point in my life. I mean, I’m so focused on work, and even when I’m not, there’s no one I’d rather spend time with than Rory. She’s brilliant, and funny, and she really— 

**Kirsner:** I’m sorry. Um, if we could—

**Geller:** I’m not finished! Rory is the best person I know, and she makes me into a better person. I’m amazed— 

**Kirsner:** I think that—

**Geller:** —she’s willing to spend as much time with me as she is, living and working so closely together. If— 

**Kirsner:** —we need to wrap—

**Geller:** —it’s not, unfortunately, recognized in the state of California, but if— 

**Kirsner:** —this up.

**Geller:** —if we could legally get married, I would want to marry her. So I guess all I’m saying is that there’s really no coping required. 

**Kirsner:** So, uh, I was told that was our last question, so you’ll have a chance to come and talk to the panelists afterwards. I want to do some last promotion though, which is, Jonathan is at Antone’s tonight at 7 pm…

* * *

_Twitter, 5:32 pm EDT March 15, 2009 _

**@anotheramym:** I’m at SXSW and just learned that @paris_geller and @therealrory are a couple! OMG!!! Almost squeed out loud. Trying to be cool though.

**@gay_for_you:** @anotheramym Are you serious right now?!?! This is all I ever wanted for them. I can’t even

**@anotheramym:** @gay_for_you I know, right? 

**@anotheramym:** @gay_for_you Paris just told this panel that if gay marriage was legal in California they’d totally be married. My heart.

**@gay_for_you:** @anotheramym Awwww. Do you think I should invite them to come stay with me and get married?

**@gay_for_you:** @anotheramym j/k I know that would be too invasive. But a girl can dream…

* * *

_Text message conversation between Rory Gilmore and Paris Geller, March 15, 2009_

-5:35 pm-

Paris. 

Paris, what is going on?

I’m getting these weird twitter mentions

please respond!!!!

-6:22 pm-

Paris! My MOTHER called me to ask what is going on

apparently she has a google alert for you

(sidenote: why for you and not for me?)

(I’ll ask her later)

and now she thinks she’s like, failed as a parent

because I haven’t COME OUT TO HER

PARIS

CALL ME

-7:02 pm-

please

before Grandma and Grandpa get involved

I’m begging you

-7:36 pm-

PARIS

we don’t even live in California

gay marriage is legal here

Miss Patty sang at one last week

my mom just had her call me about it

-9:16 pm-

PARIS PLEASE I’M DYING HERE

I’m about to be smothered by the sheer force of acceptance and goodwill rolling out of Stars Hollow

-9:37 pm-

Paris, I swear to god if Luke comes over here with a rainbow anything before you text me back I will end you

and he IS coming

-10:04 pm-

you’re a dead woman

I will also be eating yours. Obviously.

-11:02 pm-

sorry

you would think there would be more charging stations here

my phone has been dead since like noon

it has been extremely inconvenient

I’m writing email addresses in a notebook like it’s 2002

anyway, Markos(!) invited me to this party and I’m still mingling like hell

think I may have found someone who can help us implement community posts

I’ll text when I get back to the room

don’t wait up

* * *

**The Dating Diaries: How an SXSW Panel (That I Didn’t Even Go To) Changed My Life**

Rory Gilmore | April 15, 2009 | ReadNow  
---|---|---  
  
_We’ve received a lot of questions in the past month about Rory’s regular feature The Dating Diaries in light of Paris’s comments on her panel at SXSW. This will be the last installment of that column for awhile. (We hope!) It may not be the story you’re expecting, but it is—we promise—absolutely true. -Eds._

This time, I didn’t find a date on OkCupid, although my date did have a profile there. In fact, I’d helped her write it myself, after she told me she was ready to try dating again last fall. But I’d marked her profile—like mine—as looking for men only. After all, we’d both only dated men in the past, and she didn’t say anything about wanting to make a change. That is until, onstage at SXSW, she said she’d like to marry me.

This came as a surprise to a lot of people—readers of this column, grandparents, ex-boyfriends—but maybe most of all to me. While it seemed like everyone else was learning something new about the two of us, I was still trying to process the rumors coming off Twitter, and later the story as Paris told it. My Twitter mentions were blowing up, mostly with kind messages from readers who were excited to learn more about Paris and me, but also with the occasional question about the accuracy of my past reports in this column. If I was dating Paris, was I even really trying on all these first-internet-dates with guys? Did they even happen? 

At the same time I was fielding questions from family and friends, starting with my mom. Why hadn’t I told them about my relationship with Paris? Didn’t I know that they would love me no matter what? I did know, but my attempts to persuade them of this apparently weren’t very convincing. Perhaps it was the fact that I kept denying Paris and I were even dating, or perhaps it was the fact that I grew up in a small town with a big heart, but nothing I did seemed to stem the tide of concerned good wishes coming my—our—way. In the few days after Paris’s panel appearance, friends, family, and former neighbors brought over a small mountain of rainbow paraphernalia, starting with rainbow doughnuts (quickly eaten) and ending with a “lightly used” rainbow clown wig (quickly “put away for a special occasion”).

Meanwhile, when the doorbell wasn’t ringing and I was successfully ignoring Twitter, sometimes by setting my phone to silent and asking a visitor to hide it from me, I was having what can best be described as a minor breakdown. Alone in our apartment, I was free to put any spin I wanted on Paris’s words—and even to imagine what they’d really been, since there was no audio recording of the panel posted in those first few days. Too much alone time and too many unknowns are never good for my imagination, and I got into a panicked spiral, worrying that I had been somehow leading Paris on. Perhaps we’d been dating for years and I’d simply never realized it! (Regular readers may be reminded of the installment of this column in which a guy at a coffee shop who I thought was being really pushy about making conversation with me turned out—thirty minutes in—to be the date I’d arranged to meet at that exact place and time. Being oblivious is a real concern for me!) 

Paris herself wasn’t available to talk me out of this spiral because she’d booked a full schedule of networking both at SXSW and in Silicon Valley for a few days afterwards. I could see the number of engagements on her calendar increasing as her trip went on and she scheduled follow-ups with people she’d been meeting. (Yes, of course we share our calendars.) So I knew she didn’t have time for more than quick check-ins with me to make sure that I hadn’t accidentally deleted the site or forgotten to schedule contributor posts. However, my own attempts to ground myself in her absence met with limited success. A trip to the HQ section of my local college library suggested that perhaps Paris had meant a Boston marriage, a no-longer-common term for two women sharing a household and making a life together. But even if so, had Paris been aware that in many cases these women shared a connection that included elements modern society would see as romantic and even sexual in nature? 

After a few days of worrying about what Paris had meant, and a few nights of definitely not enough sleep, I realized I had a new, and even more concerning, question: what did I want her to mean? At first, I’d been looking for ways that her words could mean anything other than what they said. But after several solitary days interspersed with assuring everyone I knew that there was nothing romantic between us, I was starting to feel less positive about that fact. Were our regular Sunday brunch dates really so different from the brunch dates I’d been on with guys? Sure, they were less awkward, but we were eating the same eggs, drinking the same coffee, and talking about the same sorts of things. And whether they were or not, did I _want_ them to be different? I was no longer certain. The futures I planned at brunch with Paris felt more compelling than any of the futures I’d imagined while listening to some guy approve of how “real” I was being by ordering a stack of pancakes after finishing my first plate of food. Maybe that shouldn’t have been surprising—Paris and I have already taken several big steps into the future together, including cofounding this website. But suddenly I was seeing all of those steps in a whole new light. 

By the time Paris was due home, I was barely holding it together. I’m not a morning person at the best of times, so when I picked Paris up in New York Saturday morning after her red-eye, I didn’t really expect her to notice anything unusual about my bleary eyes and scattered thoughts. I still think I could have pulled it off, except that as soon as Paris saw me waiting outside security, she ran up and hugged me. Paris isn’t normally big on overt expressions of any kind of affection; she’s more of a feral cat than a golden retriever. So when I got hugged instead of handed a carry-on and towed briskly to baggage claim, my brain must have short-circuited, because suddenly I heard myself saying “Aww, Paris, I love you too,” in a really sappy voice. And then I started crying.

A moment later, I felt Paris stiffen. She pulled back and looked at me, her eyes wide and mouth tight. “What’s wrong? If something’s wrong you should have told me on the phone, I was in California, not on the moon, for God’s sake! Rory! We have a business together, you can’t just expect to handle everything yourself!” By this point she’d dragged me, and her bags, out of the middle of the traffic area and to a row of unoccupied chairs against the wall. “Come on, Rory, spill. No one’s listening.” 

I looked around at the sleepy business travelers and the parents wrangling pajama-clad children through security. This was a mistake; I suddenly had a flash of myself and Paris herding our own children through an airport, trying to take them on a highly organized trip to Disneyworld. The trip would inevitably erupt into chaos when Paris’s schedule for which rides to visit in what order to minimize waiting times met one of the children’s insistence on riding It’s A Small World for an entire afternoon. I loved it. I cried harder, covering my face with my hands.

“Rory, please.” Paris’s voice was soft now. Without looking I knew she was holding one hand precisely two inches from my shoulder, trying to decide whether touching me would be comforting or condescending. “Whatever it is, you can tell me. Are you—did you get another job offer? The Times?”

“No,” I said. I still couldn’t look at her. “I don’t know. I think it’s just, your panel, all the times I’ve told people we aren’t dating this week—” I didn’t know how to continue, but it didn’t matter, because Paris interrupted me anyway.

“I’m sorry about the panel,” she said, for the first time in the six days since it had taken place. “I don’t know what got into me, you know how I get with public speaking.” I nodded. “I guess I’m just sensitive about the implication that there’s something missing from my life if I don’t have a boyfriend, you know? That my worth is predicated on male approval, no matter whether I find that relevant or not.”

“Is that—all?” I asked, trying to keep the disappointment out of my voice. 

Paris was quiet for a moment. I turned to look at her, but she was staring down the hallway to departures. “I mean, I don’t know that I do find it relevant. Right now. But I still shouldn’t have—I didn’t mean to mess things up for you. I know you’d like to have a boyfriend again, you always—“

“I’m not sure I would,” I said quickly, not wanting to hear the end of that sentence. “I mean, I didn’t love spending the last week explaining to everyone we know that it’s not that we don’t _trust_ them with the news that we’re dating, but that we _aren’t_ dating. But the really hard thing was, I started wondering, should I even be telling people this?” I paused, unsure how to explain my thought process.

“I get it,” Paris said. “I left you to make the strategic choice about how to respond to my gaffe alone; do we do the fake-dating thing or do we walk it back? I’m not going to second-guess your call.”

“No!” I took a deep breath, reminding myself that Paris would eventually figure out the truth whether I told her or not. I seriously do think she might be a witch. In a good way. “I meant, I started thinking, maybe I would rather we were dating. Maybe we could be. Maybe by telling everyone we weren’t, I was making it so we wouldn’t be. And maybe, maybe I didn’t want that.” 

“Oh,” Paris said quietly. “Huh.” 

With every moment that passed I felt more embarrassed by the things I’d just said. I don’t like being the one who cares more in a relationship, and I like it even less when everyone knows it’s happening. And this wasn’t even a relationship, just me blowing everything out of proportion.

I shook myself out of it a little and stood up. “Come on, let’s go get your bag!” I said as brightly as I could. “Traffic is going to be awful, we better not wait any longer.” I took a few quick steps towards baggage claim before I realized that Paris hadn’t moved. “Paris? Come on!”

“I’m coming, I just…” Paris had a lost look on her face as she stood up and groped around her for her bags, her eyes seeming fixed on a 3-1-1 sign across the hall. “Huh. I hadn’t realized.” Her voice was soft, almost as if she’d forgotten she wasn’t alone.

“Paris!” I said—well, shouted—letting my embarrassment turn into irritation. “Are you coming or not?”

“I’m coming,” Paris said, her tone brisk again. “I just need to—“

“What?” I asked, still irritated.

And then she kissed me. It wasn’t a perfect, storybook kiss. Paris had a laptop bag in one hand, and it was knocking into my leg. On the other side, there was a thunk as her carry-on overbalanced and crashed onto the floor. And a full flight must have just landed, because just as I was getting over my irritation and anxiety and relaxing into the rhythm of the kiss, we were surrounded by a stream of fast-walking people throwing irritated comments at us as they passed. I realized the toppled luggage probably really was a hazard, and we stopped kissing and went to baggage claim. Well, we stopped kissing at least until we got back to the car. There may have been some further delays in the parking garage. But a lady doesn’t kiss and tell, or at least not too much. 

I will say that while we’re not actually ready to get married after three weeks of dating, things are going well so far. So many thanks to OkCupid for sponsoring the run of this column, including today’s episode, but I’ve turned my profile to looking for “friends only.” Let’s hope it stays that way.

**Author's Note:**

> \- The Marketing and New Media panel was a real panel at SXSW 2009; I have obviously modified the list of panelists and taken liberties with events. Special thanks to moderator Scott Kirsner who really did put up [panel audio](http://cinematech.blogspot.com/2009/03/audio-sxsw-panel-on-building-your.html) a few days after the event. Overall I was pleasantly surprised by how much detailed information about SXSW 2009 is still available from odd corners of the internet.  
\- The photo Rory sent Paris was adapted from flickr user Jordanpattern’s photo [Donut Bite](https://www.flickr.com/photos/jordanpattern/3668517767) and is licensed [CC BY-NC-SA 2.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/).


End file.
